


Counterpoint (Bermuda Triangle--Water of Life Overdub)

by Erinya



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Other, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:31:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1534340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erinya/pseuds/Erinya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There is more than one kind of love, perhaps, and more than one kind of wanting."  It doesn't always have to be a competition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counterpoint (Bermuda Triangle--Water of Life Overdub)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilfluffykitten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilfluffykitten/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Competition](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/47186) by Lilfluffykitten. 



> Canon-ish through At Worlds End; AU elements from On Stranger Tides.

_“Anybody can have the harmony, if they will leave us the counterpoint.”_

\--Dorothy Sayers

 

* * *

 

 

_Barbossa? He was a cruel man, a traitor in his bones, and in him I recognized my like, seduced him and betrayed him in his turn. We bore the dark curse together, ten years of a half-life haunting the seas, but he used me hard and never turned an ear to my whisperings. His avarice was ever his undoing._

_Turner...his was a good heart and a strong hand, and in the end he wanted me, just as all the others did: but for his own ends only, and I was merely the means to them. He did not hear nor did he understand the call of the sea, **my** call, and he never loved me at all._

_And Norrington: my old enemy, sworn to bring me down. Yet it was he who knelt to me, in the end, swabbing my boards like the lowest cabin boy, and I exulted to see him fallen so fast and far before my mast. But I still heard the beat of hatred in his blood._

_But Sparrow, he was mine, always, from the first moment he stepped onto my deck. He spoke to me and listened, too, raised me from the depths at the price of his soul, called me his Dark Lady in his cups; and his were the tender hands of a lover on my worn hull and on my wheel. He was mine, and he came for me even when I had betrayed him; and he loved only me._

_Until **she** came along..._

_Elizabeth, with her quick mind and quicker temper. Elizabeth, leaning into him with temptations all unspoken, promises she never meant to keep. Elizabeth, with her pirate's heart, with her lust for freedom, with her unflinching willingness to do whatever was necessary. Elizabeth, who would undo us with a kiss, then sail beyond the world's end to fetch us back to life._

_She and I were not so different, after all, though she were a creature of flesh and blood and myself a thing of black bones, black canvas, and black magic. She was the one thing he might have loved as much._

_I could have hated her, for that._

*** * ***

The castaway was shaking with fever, bone-thin and half-mad from sun and thirst. It was only when they drew the battered little skiff aboard and he swayed unsteadily to his feet that recognition hit her, with a sickening jolt that was like running aground.

For a moment he knew her too, before his face darkened, twisted. “ _You_ ,” he hissed, flinching wildly from the hand she stretched to steady him; then his eyes rolled back as he crumpled before her, and she could not stop his fall.

How long he'd been drifting rudderless under the skiff's tattered sails, none of them could tell, and he surely wasn't fit to. At her command, the men of the _Empress_ bore him into her cabin, laid him on the bed, bowed, and withdrew, their lowered voices beginning only when the door had shut.

She paid the voices no mind. Let them gossip; it would not be anything she had not heard or imagined already.

The sick man lay clutching a scrap of parchment tightly in his hand and muttering in his delirium about betrayal, the _Pearl_ , and a thrice-blasted compass that never worked when he needed it.

“Oh, Jack,” murmured the King of the Pirates. “What have you done to yourself?”

Insensible, or just intractable, he did not answer her.

* * *

She had soaked a cloth, was wringing water drip by slow drip past his cracked and bleeding lips when he surged upright, gasping and staring, startling her.

“Lost—I was lost—the _Pearl—_ damn it, I lost her--”

She pressed the cool, damp rag to his burning forehead. “Shh, shh, now,” she said, hand against his shoulder, feeling the bones standing out sharply there as she gently pushed him down among the pillows; and he looked at her then and saw her, spoke her name.

“Elizabeth...” His voice was hoarse and weak, but he was lucid now, though his expression was wary. “So it's you, then.”

“A nice greeting for your savior, I shouldn't think,” she said lightly, dropping her hands to her sides. "Who were you expecting?  A mermaid, perhaps?"

“Anything but a siren.  My mistake.”  He shifted, fretful and sulky-eyed. “Honestly, it's not fair of you to haunt a man like this. _You_ killed _me_ , remember? Seems to me I'm the one who should be doing the haunting.”

Heat rising in her cheeks, she snapped, “I can set you adrift again if you'd like.”

“Aye, and you'd like that too, wouldn't you? Good sport for you. Fish me out and throw me back. Catch and release, is that it?” He struggled again to sit up, but the savage bitterness of his words appeared to leave him exhausted, and he fell back, breathing hard.

“Really, Jack, if you think I--” But it was clear enough what he thought of her, if not what he wanted from her. “I didn't even know it was you! I would have helped anyone I found stranded like that.”

“The good King Elizabeth, rescuer of derelicts, nurse to reprobates. How very magnanimous of you.”

They glared at each other for a long moment—he, helpless and furious, she, furious and shaken—until she finally turned away, busying herself with the cloth and the basin. The charged silence lengthened between them, and seemed inclined to stretch into eternity.

“Is this how it's always going to be between us, Jack?” she said, low, when she could trust herself to speak again.

“How's that?” The anger had ebbed from his voice and he sounded merely weary now; weary and _old_. She never thought of Jack Sparrow as an old man, but she knew he was her elder by a score of years, maybe more. Suddenly she heard the hollow echo of those years behind his words. “Acrimonious? Inimical? Vexatious? You tell me, Lizzie. How would you like it to be?”

She twisted dirty water from the rags mechanically, fixing her stinging eyes on the basin's cloudy swirls. “I had _hoped_ ,” she said, “that we could at least be friends, someday.” When he didn't answer, she dared a glance in his direction; but he had turned away from her, gazing out the murky cabin window at the sea. “Jack,” she prodded. “What happened to you out there?”

“There was a storm off Bermuda,” he said, and frowned. “I lost the _Pearl_. Hector stole her from me, curse his traitorous black heart. Meant to go after her— _was_ going after her...”

“Chasing the fastest ship in the Caribbean in a dinghy? Did you really think that was going to work?”

“It might have,” he grumbled, “if my blasted compass hadn't gone all catawampus.”

“At least your famous luck didn't abandon you as well. You were a long way from Bermuda, Jack. If we hadn't come across you when we did--”

“Wasn't luck, Bess.” His long fingers plucked at the counterpane and he stirred restively, dodging her questioning look. “Please tell me you have rum. I'm dreadfully thirsty.”

“No rum for you,” she said, but relief flooded through her. “Not 'til you're strong enough to fetch it yourself.”

He grimaced at the ladle full of brackish water she held to his lips, but drank it down obediently enough. When he had fallen back again into a fitful sleep, she sat still watching him, the way his skin stretched tight across his sunken cheeks, the play of the shadows around his eyes, the petulant crease of his brow.

It had been three months since they'd said goodbye as if it were the last time; she hadn't thought it really was, then, thought possibly it never would be, but she hadn't expected the next time to be quite like this.

What could it be, if not luck, then? What trick of fate kept theirs entwined so, against their higher loyalties and their better judgment?

She sighed, and her hand dropped to her belly, curving more of late, though not from idleness or a life lived easily. No matter; she would see him well again, and send him on his way. Hope he found the thing he sought.

Hope she could forget its siren song, herself.

_That's what the Black Pearl really is. Freedom..._

Her mouth twisted, wry. That ship was ever his obsession. It had enslaved him, enslaved Barbossa, enslaved them all. Even she had heard the dark ship's call, in her blood, in her bones, like a shard of ice through her heart.

_Freedom? Hardly._

After all these years, his precious _Pearl_ still drove him, still eluded him. It would be the death of him, someday. Again.

Last time, she had helped it along. This time, who was she to stop him?

She rose to leave the room, and as she did, she heard a whisper, a soft whirring, from the vicinity of the bed.

His compass, spinning at his belt. She froze, hand upon the door; heard it shiver, settling.

“Oh, Jack. I'm sorry. We are neither of us free...”

But he was lost again in fever-dreams and could not hear her. A pity, she thought; her one capitulation.

* * *

“Elizabeth,” he said abruptly, a few days later when he was a little stronger and had taken to restless pacing around her cabin. “I have a business proposal for you.”

She eyed him over the maps and instruments spread across her table. “Are you sure you're well enough to be out of bed?” He _was_ swaying a bit, to be sure, although that wasn't much change from Jack at the pinnacle of health. The gray cast that lay beneath the brown of his skin and the deep hollows lingering around his eyes were somewhat more worrying.

“Quite well, thank you, Your Nurseliness. And I've drunk all my broth and eaten my orange, so you needn't fuss.”

He was well enough to give her cheek, at least, which was something. “That's as may be,” she said, austere. “But unless I misheard, you did just propose a business arrangement. It's not like you of late to trust me, Captain Sparrow.”

“Oh, but business isn't about trust, Lizzie dear. Merely a matter of holding interests in common—nothing more.”

“Naturally,” she said. “So what is it this time? The sunken gold of El Dorado? The ill-gotten gains of Captain Kidd? The lost city of Atlantis? Or, at a guess...reclaiming your precious _Pearl_?”

"Wrong!” he crowed; then, at her skeptical eyebrow, “Or...at least, reclaiming the _Pearl_ would be merely the first step in pursuit of a much greater prize.”

“I knew it...” But he went on over her, waving away her triumph with a magician's flourish.

“A prize the benefits of which I believe you, Elizabeth Turner, King of the Pirates, Captain of the Empress, and Lady to a certain Dutchman of the flying persuasion, would have no little interest. A priceless treasure, to which mere gold and trinkets and curiosities cannot hold a candle in the way of value.” He lowered his voice, with a gesture to match the extravagance of his clauses. “The fabled _Aqua de Vida,_ Elizabeth. Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth. I take it you know the story.”

Only studied deliberation kept her gaze fixed on the charts she was surveying. The even steps of the calipers danced from their current coordinates to the berth of Shipwreck Cove in perfect counterpoint to the hitch in her breath. “A legend,” she said. “A fool's errand.”

“But you've heard of it.”

“Of course I have,” she said impatiently. “Jack, it's madness! No one knows where the Fountain is, if it even exists. Your Ponce de Leon died trying to find it. And you propose to find it—how? With that compass of yours?”

“No. With _this_.” He slapped a ragged circle of yellowed rice paper down atop her carefully charted course.

“The Mao Kun Map,” she breathed. She'd thought that torn piece of parchment looked familiar. “But...what have you done to it? That chart was a treasure in its own right!”

“Sometimes, sacrifices must need be made for a greater good...as you and I both have reason to know, my dear,” he added, and for a moment his smile was a shark's smile, pointed and fierce. “Circumstances arose, as they will, and I was forced to leave the rest of the artifact in the tender care of my esteemed colleague.”

“Barbossa.” She didn't need to see his fingers flicker in assent. “He's after the Fountain, too.”

“Aye. But he doesn't know where it is, so I fear he'll be looking for me instead, by now.” Deftly, he rolled up the precious little scrap and tucked it away. “You see the benefit for you, of course. Help me find the Fountain, and you can rendezvous with your dear William every ten years until Judgment Day, without ever getting old and wrinkly.”

“It is tempting,” she said, slowly. “I can't deny that.”

“Come with me, love,” he said; and she knew all too well that silky tone of persuasion, the wide dark eyes, the glitter of his grin. “Just think of the stories they'll tell of you. The Immortal Pirate King.”

“And here I thought you wanted to be 'Jack Sparrow, the last pirate.'”

“Just as I would have thought you'd jump at the chance to turn...” he counted theatrically on his fingers... “a mere six conjugal visits—if you're lucky, that is—into an indefinite number.”

“I did think of that,” she said, although she hadn't thought of it in quite those terms. In fact, she'd been trying _not_ to think of it in those terms for some five months, and rather felt as if Jack had splashed her with icy water while simultaneously offering her the moon. Perhaps that was why she only now arrived at the thing about all this that troubled her the most; and, after all, perhaps that was his intent. _Bloody pirate._

“There's one thing I don't understand in all of this,” she said, watching him. “Why ask me, Jack? You have the chart.”

“But no ship,” he protested. “No crew. No _Pearl._ ”

“It's but a few days' sail to the Cove. You'll find ships and crew enough there for this scheme of yours.”

There _was_ something there. In an instant, the charming, conspiratorial smile was gone; he turned his back with a harsh, mirthless laugh, pacing the length of the cabin. “If only it were so easy, love.”

“Jack?” He didn't look around at his name, but his hands twitched, his shoulders tensing as if anticipating a blow. “What's gone wrong with your compass?”

The narrow shoulders slumped; so her shot in the dark was the hit he had expected. “Would you believe,” he said, “I don't know what I want?”

“Not the _Pearl,_ then?” And her voice shook a bit, despite herself.

He turned, then, and she could see the answer plainly on his face, hope and desolation. Only, now that she'd forced it from him, she wasn't sure she wanted to know it at all...

“I thought I did,” he said. “And then I woke up... _here_.”

“You know I can't,” she said, danger running hot and cold within her, heart racing and limbs leaden with a shock that was and was not fear. She couldn't afford to be sorry. Not for this.

“I know,” he said. “You're to be faithful. For a chance at once in ten years. And I could never be so true, to you.”

_It could never work between us, darling._

“It's not like that,” she said; but her hand curved unconsciously around her belly, where Will Turner's child dreamed and grew. “I could never compete with the _Pearl_ , Jack. Not for long, and you know that as well as I. But perhaps there is another way...”

* * *

At the helm, they stood together, his hand cupped in both of hers; and the compass turned, and trembled, and found its heading.

“You see?” She laughed; hoped he didn't hear the tremor there. “Nothing wrong with your compass, after all.” It was not her love he had wanted most, then, but something else. Something less, or perhaps more: her blessing, her alliance...her friendship? And she didn't know whether to be relieved or saddened by this truth. Didn't want to know where the compass would point, if she held it on her own.

_But there is more than one kind of love, perhaps; more than one kind of wanting._

“You know I can't let you come with me,” he said, and his voice, too, was rough with words unsaid. “Too dangerous in your condition. Your William would just about kill me, I think.”

“No, you _must_ let me,” said the Pirate King. “It is one thing I can give you. And I'm no invalid yet.”

* * *

She saw him back to the _Pearl_ 's wheel again, once the ship was his and Barbossa marooned far behind them on some godforsaken island. Her belly had swelled into noticeable roundness, but she was still quick enough to be deadly in the fight they'd won, and to catch him by surprise with the light brush of her lips against his cheek.

_This time, it has to be enough._

“Good luck, Captain Sparrow,” she said. “I hope you find what you're looking for.”

The pain hit her, then. It swamped her, like a wave, until she could not breathe. She would have fallen under it, but when she surfaced, gasping, Jack was bearing her up, calling her name.

“Elizabeth, what is it? Talk to me, love.”

The wave had left her skirts and the boards of the deck beneath her slick and wet in its wake. “The baby,” Elizabeth whispered. “No. It can't be. Jack, it's too soon...”

The next wave was red with fear, and rose to drown her.

* * *

 _She remembers little of what comes after, and what she does is like a dream. There is screaming, and her throat is raw; but what she remembers better is the creak and moan of the **Black Pearl**_ ' _s boards around her, answering._

 ** _Is it a curse?_** _she wonders, half-delirious. She finds herself calling out to the **Pearl**_ _, begging for clemency. **I place no claim on him. Please, I yield it all, if only...if...**_

_And perhaps the ship can hear her, for its rocking soothes her, like a child cradled in its mother's arms._

_Jack's voice is the next thing she remembers. With an urgency she does not understand, he tells her they have sighted land, the secret island from his scrap of chart, a place he calls Bimini. They are going upriver, he says. And when the pain rips through her anew, his hand is on her hair, on her forehead, holding hers. Or maybe that is just a dream, indeed._

_Hold on, he tells her, pleading with her; she's trying, but something breaks inside her, and the bed is soaked in blood. And then a cry that is not her own. And silence._

_* * *_

_She is plunged underwater, air escaping her lungs like a string of pearls._

_He carries her upward, pulls her onto shore. Leans over her, water sliding from his lips to hers, drip by slow drip onto her tongue._

_She tastes a sharp sweetness, like summer, like wind in black sails. Like freedom._

* * *

She woke in her bed in the _Empress_ 's cabin to the sound of the newborn child beside her as it stirred and cried in hunger. Jack was nowhere to be seen.

Later, she went out to look for him, surprised at her own ability to rise and walk the deck in the wake of searing agony she only half-remembered. But the men could tell her only that the _Black Pearl_ was gone.

 * * *

Time in Shipwreck Cove passes quickly. It seems to Elizabeth that small Jamie is crawling and then walking before she knows it, and sometimes it is all she can do to capture the brightest moments of his babyhood in her memory. Ten years, she tells herself, will also be gone before she knows it; and so the loneliness that catches sharp and rough in her throat at intervals, that leaves her breathless, must someday pass away.

One brilliant autumn afternoon, she hears a familiar tread behind her as she watches her son play among the bones of long-dead ships. She turns, and Jack is there; and past him, against the towering cliffs, the silhouette of black sails. The _Pearl_ , at anchor in her harbor.

“You look...” she breathes. “Exactly the same.”

“So do you, at that,” he grins.

“You never gave me a chance to thank you for saving your life.” She hesitates. “You did save my life, didn't you?”

He waves a hand. “A gift. For you...and bonny William.” And she was wrong; he is not exactly the same. Something transmuted in his eyes, both older and younger. “He'll live forever, Bess. And now, so shall you.”

“And you...?”

“Aye, well. Eternity seemed a long time to live all by my onesies, savvy?”

* * *

_Was it love or jealousy between us? I could never quite be sure. To love the one whom our love loves, that is such a human way. But likewise, so is hating the one whom your love loves. There is nothing simple, there._

_I could almost hate her, because she could touch him; because of how he looked at her; because of that kiss. And yet again, I could almost hate her for never quite loving him back._

_But let it be said, at least she understood that Jack loved me first, and best, and last._

_Let it be said, she never tried to compete with me for that place in his heart._

_And for that, I think I could almost love her, after all._


End file.
